Paisley Rekdal Poems

And the black water under the boats with their pools
of bilge rainbowed out like rinds
of steak fat, the salt thick
in my nostrils, but pleasant, too: details
...

I'm here, one fat cherry
blossom blooming like a clod,

one sad groat glazing, a needle puling thread,
...

Cut back the stems an inch to keep in bloom.
So instructs the florist's note
enclosed inside the flowers.
Who knew what was cut
...

I have been taught never to brag but now
I cannot help it: I keep
a beautiful garden, all abundance,
indiscriminate, pulling itself
...

And now the silver, ripping sound of white on white, the satin,
light snow torn
under wheels, car bang metally grenading, and the wood poles,
whipping, loom—
...

It's a simple resistance

between the pull of springs
and struggle of joints: two coiled
silver muscles working
...

It was the week of asking. Asking
to watch her eat. Asking if she understood
the doctors' questions. Asking her
to explain the difference between
...

A man can cry, all night, your back
shaking against me as your mother
sleeps, hooked to the drip
...

How horrible it is, how horrible
that Cronenberg film where Goldblum's trapped
...

unveil themselves in dark.
They hang, each a jagged,
...